


2 0 1 9

by Vixx2pointOh



Series: A Picture Tells [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bickering, F/M, Love/Hate, Meet-Cute, One Shot, Rival Relationship, Rivals to ..., Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-17 16:48:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20624309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vixx2pointOh/pseuds/Vixx2pointOh
Summary: Some stories take a few decades to be told...After inheriting a house from a relative she barely knew, Felicity once again meets the infamous Oliver Queen... and he's not so happy about it either.





	2 0 1 9

**Author's Note:**

> Second Week of the #APictureTells Series.
> 
> This week a stunning gothic-Victorian glass house. Now, you'll remember (or you should) that I said I would either use the building as it was in the photo, OR what it used to be. This week, it's the former.
> 
> Hope you like this frustrating little one shot xo

The air was arid and carried a musky smell on the tips of it as Felicity walked up the front steps of the once-splendored Victorian house down a leafy country lane that was once the sprawling heights of back country, Starling City.

Of course, all these years and developments later, it was neither opulent nor sprawled. The area sat on the fringes of the ever-extending urban tranche that grew out from the tall spindles of the City in the distance. There wasn’t much to it, and the route that took Felicity there was littered with potholes and torn-up asphalt. Most of the semi-rural and slightly-affluent neighbourhood, made up of predominantly small farm blocks, had all but vanished according to the taxi driver who’d driven Felicity there; and as they rolled through what would be considered “main street” – which consisted of three boarded-up shops, a gas station with one pump, and a small diner that boasted “the best pork rolls in all the county”, Felicity understood exactly what he meant.

There wasn’t much to this place, and while Frank – the driver – prattled on about the reasons (something about a large development of condos and golf clubs), Felicity was barely paying much attention.

After all, she was there on business.  
Personal business, but business all the same.

The house she was standing in front of, with flaking green storm shutters and a porch swing that looked like an accident waiting to happen, was apparently hers.

Or at least that was what the rotund man with a tightly tailored suit and a reddish nose had told her when he showed up at her office in Las Vegas two months ago.

She’d laughed it off, thanked him for his time, and promised to visit the same; but she had never really intended to do that last one. In fact, she was pretty set on selling it or giving it away – she honestly didn’t care – it was after all, bequeathed from a great aunt on her father’s side, that she’d only ever met the once.

Only, finding her boyfriend in bed with his Bikram Yoga instructor last week had sent Felicity into a sort of tailspin (not that she would have called it that; bleaching his entire collection of Henley tee-shirts had been an accident of sorts) and that was when she remembered this place. At her mother’s suggestion, she decided to make the journey.

Maybe a few days elsewhere would do her some good.

Surprisingly, the house wasn’t in as complete a disarray as she suspected it would be. In fact, it appeared – aside from row of floor to ceiling newspapers that ran along one side of the hallway, her shut in Great Aunt seemed to keep the villa in quite good condition.

Rest her soul.

Felicity stood on the hardwood floors and looked around the three story villa that undoubtedly had become too much for the older woman to maintain beyond a sweep every now and again. The wallpaper was tinged brown by the sun and was peeling along the seams. As she walked in deeper and found herself in the quaint little living room, with its flowery couch and dainty lace doilies everywhere, she felt sorry for the older lady, and a little guilty if she was honest.

Felicity had met her great Aunt Hattie Kuttler only the once, and it was barely a “meet”. She had been 5 at the time, and it was one of those scarce times when her father had remembered he had a child and had paid her a visit. The tight-lipped woman had stayed in her black town car while Felicity’s father had dropped by unannounced that wintery afternoon.

The window had been rolled down and Felicity saw a women who, even back then, had a shock of grey hair and beady blue eyes. They’d never even spoken, and Felicity had forgotten all about her, assuming she’d forgotten all about the great niece from Las Vegas.

It turned out she hadn’t.

Felicity pottered around the sunning living room, touching tiny remnants of a life she knew nothing about. Hattie was 102 when she died, meaning she was born at a time where war gripped the world. She had lived through the Great Depression and had seen Presidents come and go. But she had lived alone, on this large block, with no other family to speak of.

There were photos on the mantle of the tiled fireplace, but they were all of a time long gone and none of the people in them seemed familiar.

There really wasn’t much to be said about Great Aunt Hattie at all. She was never married. Had no children. Not even a cat.

As she walked through into the kitchen she stood in front of the back door and looked out at the plot of land that disappeared down a slope at the edge. Weeds had claimed much of the boxed gardens, but it was fairly clear that Great Aunt Hattie had one love; gardening.

Felicity sat her suitcase down in the master bedroom on the second floor before she wandered over to the bay window that caught the most fantastic afternoon sun. From the vantage point of the coral cushions, Felicity could see deeper into the back reaches of the property and there, in the very distance something caught her eye; a stunning glasshouse.

Felicity donned her most sensible shoes and threw on a pair of jeans before she made the walk through waist height grass to the stunning bit of vintage architecture. The front stood proud despite the creep of weeds growing both inside and around it, with a double high centre with intricate mouldings and rusted framing with ornate twists and arched embellishments of iron.

Wings either side curved downward towards the ground, where it met masonry work. Sprigs of iron rose up at the top like a spire made to resemble something like a stylised fleur de lis reached up into an elegant weather vane.

Cautiously, Felicity entered, ducking her head to go under a hanging vine that grew from one side of the Gothic-styled greenhouse to the other. There were the remains of what appeared to be a cobbled path in places that parted down either wing of the building. It was deceptively large and while Felicity found herself pushing between overgrown plants and a jungle of vines, it was clear that it would have once boasted quite the array of both space and garden.

In the centre of the building sat a defunct concrete fountain and pond that Felicity imagined might have once been home to a collection of fish. The statue that appeared to be the fountain’s main component was carved in stone, but was now chipped and mottled with moss and there appeared to be an inscription she couldn’t quite make out after the passage of time had worn most of it away.

There was something quite fascinatingly beautiful about the glasshouse, and even after she had gone through as much of it as the vegetation would allow, she really felt there was more to it still to be discovered.

She wasn’t wrong.

**•|•**

That evening with a fresh coffee and the fire lit to ease the chill of the drafty house, Felicity found the letter that had accompanied the key and a copy of her Great Aunt’s Will. She’d left it untouched in Vegas, but now seemed as good a time as any to read it. She honestly couldn’t imagine what it might say.

She tore open the seal and began reading.

** _Dear Felicity,_ **

** _I realise that if you’re receiving this letter, that I have passed on, so forgive me if I skip a lot of the pleasantries, I’m dead after all so you can’t exactly hold it against me._ **

** _We seldom knew each other and that is perhaps one of my biggest regrets. Your father, my nephew, was an unscrupulous man but still I held this belief that family was deathly important. I was wrong. Or at least in the sense of who we choose to be our family._ **

** _By the time I realised this, I’m afraid my cowardice got the better of me and I thought perhaps if I sought you out then you would, quite rightly, turn me away. Many will tell you I am quite stubborn, and this is true, but it appears I was also quite chicken. For that I am sorry. Please know that while I never took an active part in your life, I did watch from afar. I saw that you graduated MIT a little younger than I was when I did in 1939. I bought 50 shares the day that your company got listed and of course, I gift those to you now too. I watched you succeed and by-ever did you._ **

** _I was much like you in my youth, as I hope my journals, which you’ll find in the chest at the foot of my bed, might show you. I give you this house and every possession in for you to do with as you see fit. I have lived a long and eventful life, but there was one thing I sadly missed out on having. So, it is somewhat selfishly that I ask you now in death, if you might consider me family._ **

** _-Hattie._ **

** _Once you reach June 1942, please open the second letter herewith._ **

Felicity sat back a little in the arm chair and wiped a fresh tear from the corner of her eye. There wasn’t a thing she knew about her Great Aunt. It didn’t take Felicity long to retrieve the journals from where Hattie had told her they would be and there were about half a dozen in total.

The earliest started in June 1939 with an excited letter to herself on the eve of her graduation. She was just shy of 23 years old and she would be graduating top in her class; a feat especially back then. The entry spoke of her hope and wonderment at the world, and of her desire to serve her country.

Flicking through, Felicity found an entry later that same year that spoke of a working for the Navy to build cutting-edge navigational systems. She spoke of many of her superiors dismissal of her work, for simply being a woman, and she concluded – rather astutely – that there would come a day that men such as those ought to be put out to pasture; because the world would outgrow such notions.

The next journal Felicity picked up was set in 1941, Hattie (then 24) had been moved to a naval base in Hawaii. There she had met a man she referred to as_ “unmistakably handsome, but foolishly trouble”_. His name was Harry and he spoke mostly of home, Starling City, and his oddly charming love of botany.

_ **“Harry told me, quite without any hint of shame, that he adored roses. When I asked him why, he enlightened me to their beauty and their strength. Quite unaware what he meant, but lost in his wonderfully blue eyes, I fibbed and told him I adored them too. The truth is, however, I rarely ever consider flowers and I am much more at home surrounded by tools and wires”.** _

Felicity snickered to herself as she read the frank admittance; it was something she herself could attest to.

An entry a few months on, confessed something even more telling

** _“I am not the type to fall madly in love, for in fact I had so long ago decided that neither love nor marriage nor children were for me. I had goals, a great many of them, and I am afraid I am not fit to be anyone’s wife. After Harry so obligingly told me of his fondness for me, I found myself telling him all this. To my surprise, he took my hand and told me that I sure was a talker, but that he wouldn’t change a thing about it._ **

** _He assured me that his love of me was not on account of me being a good cook – of which I am most certainly not, nor on the ideals that I would become less of myself for him. He spoke such wonderful things that I have no need to write down because I am most certain they will be written indelibly from here on, in my heart.”_ **

They took a leave from the Navy and returned stateside, Hattie accompanying her Harry to his home town, Starling. Felicity found no reference to a wedding, or even an engagement, but it appears that neither of them cared all that much for social precedents and they moved in together, into a charming Victorian house a long trek away from anything that resembled the bustle of a city.

The house, Felicity assumed, she was sitting in at that moment.

Another journal was filled with joyous recounts of their time spent together, a quip about the squinty-eyed look the lady across the street would give them when they turned the hose on each other in the front garden, and a few pages dedicated to fixing the old porch swing and painting the shutters Harry’s favourite colour, green.

And then a particular entry in October 1941 drew Felicity’s eye.  
**_“Harry has drawn up the most fanciful plans today, as the weather cools and his beloved roses burn with the early chill, he had decided a glasshouse would be a most wonderful adventure. I, of course, had laughed him off, my most wonderful man. But he is quite serious and he had enlisted some friends to help before the true bite of winter sets in._**

** _I asked him why such a thing was needed and he told me a most pleasant wish that every week he should present me with a flower from his garden and even in winter this should not be neglected. I told him that in that case he must build the most wonderful of glasshouses that we should also sit in it and pretend that it is summer or spring all year round._ **

November’s entries spoke of the glasshouse being completed and they spent an entire night sleeping out there amongst the rose bushes he’d so carefully transplanted there. The journal finished with a wonderful list of things that Aunt Hattie was most thankful for and her wish that the new year would find them happier still.

The next journal’s first entry was dated **_December 7 1941_**  
**_The world has changed. Many of our friends and comrades have been lost to us at Pearl Harbour. I mourn and my heart is filled with much sadness. Both Harry and I have done little but wait for news, if any, of those dearest to us. I am afraid that it won’t be good news._**

** _I am even more afraid that I know what Harry will do, for he is a man of most honourable nature and he would not expect others to fight if he did not._ **

According to the next months of entries, Harry deployed, leaving his Hattie with a promise that he would return as soon as he could to tend the roses.

He never returned.

** _7 June 1942_ **  
** _My dearest Harry, I shall miss you greatly._ **

Felicity opened the second letter as she had been instructed.

** _My Harry never returned. I will not make myself dreary with the dreadful heartache that followed the news. I spent much of my time hoping that there was some error in the message that had been relayed and that his letters would not be all I had left of him._ **

** _I waited a great long while for him to return, too long for a smart woman some might say. But I never gave my heart easily and I knew Harry would be the only man to ever possess it._ **

** _I stayed in this house, tending his very precious garden as well as I could, in the hopes that I would find him one day sitting on the porch complaining about the trees getting too large in the front yard._ **

** _That day never came._ **

** _And yet, I stayed._ **

** _I will have you know I never wallowed and I had a great many successes after the loss of my cherished love. I had men come and go, but none could live up to what Harry had been; perhaps I judged them all too harshly._ **

** _The world changed and I along with it. The garden became too much, and soon the house did too._ **

** _Then came a most unexpected knock on my front door. Which is a story I will tell soon if you are still around. My lawyer will be sure to deliver it in one week’s time._ **

** _~ Hattie_ **

Felicity folded up the note and slipped it back into its envelope. She hadn’t planned on staying more than a few days, but perhaps the change in scenery would do her good; and the phone reception was surprisingly good out there; so why not.

  
**•|•**

  
“The house it ours!” Tommy Merlyn announced as he slapped the oak door of Oliver Queen’s 50th floor office.  
“The Fresco house?” Oliver reacted with a tempered smile; a smile that hinged on what his best friend of 34 years was about to say.  
“The one and only!” Tommy shrieked, skipping his black Manolos on Oliver’s marbled floor.  
“Yes!” Oliver cheered, a mixture of excitement and utter, fucking, relief.

He turned around to the model behind his desk, the same one he’d spent three years memorising and carefully tailoring to the growing climate of Starling City; his city.

The scaled model stretched across a table that would comfortably fit a family of six and was a mix of residential town houses, a golf club, a country club, a small exclusive shopping district and every amenity you could possibly want in a sprawling gated community.

Starlingbank Estates would be his crowning glory, his finest accomplishment – aside from getting through both college and high school without knocking someone up; at least that he was aware of.

Oliver Queen lived and breathed the property market. He bought and sold anything that could be. Old houses, new houses, barren land and farm parks, companies, stocks, cars, and whatever was left and he made a tidy fortune doing it.

Sure, it was exceptionally helpful that his parents invested a tidy sum the day he graduated college, but from that point everything else had been down to his wit, his charm, and his ability to smell out a turning property tide long before anyone else could.

“That was it, that was the last house we needed,” Oliver remarked as he stood from his chair and gleaned over the future development.  
“And we spent a fucking fortune on it you know,” Tommy huffed as he sunk his hands dramatically into his pockets while he rocked beside Oliver.  
“Thomas, Thomas, Thomas,” Oliver laughed as he slapped his friend’s back. “We will make an even bigger fortune when Starlingbank makes its debut.”

Oliver stepped back from the model and walked purposefully towards a set of filing cabinets across his room. “Have John contact the excavators and demolishers, I want them to start pulling down those old houses as early as they can,” he called over his shoulder.  
“We promised that some of the historical houses would be salvaged,” Tommy commented with a slight grimace as he walked a few steps behind Oliver.  
“Right, yes, we did, fine,” Oliver huffed, “Have John escort the Heritage Society out there in a week, but maybe have his guys kick in a few of the doors and windows beforehand. The less we have to preserve the better. Have legal work up what we can and can’t do, and tell them I’ll need that all by Monday.”  
“It’s Thursday afternoon,” Tommy scoffed.  
Oliver turned and squinted at his friend without a hint of a smile. “So that should be plenty of time. Offer them overtime and cookies if you need to. I want this settled, the sooner we get out there breaking ground, the sooner we pull in buyers.”

Tommy nodded, he knew just as much as Oliver did, although he did lack some of his best friend’s tenacity and willingness to fight whomever stood in his way.

“There is one other thing,” Tommy quipped as he ran a comb of fingers through his ebony hair.  
“Which is?” Oliver asked wearily.  
“Plot number 86.”  
Oliver hummed as the number left Tommy’s lips. “The Olympic sized heated swimming pool with retractable roof right by the community hall. God that will be a sight to see,” he breathed, the mere thought of it making his mouth salivate.  
“It’s not ours,” Tommy peeped.

Oliver shook from his day dream about his spectacular vision and stared at Tommy who cringed under the heat.  
“Of course it’s ours, we signed that deal 6 months ago.”  
“She never technically signed.”  
“What? Carter right?”  
“Kuttler”  
“I took those papers to that old lady myself, I endured listening to her talk about roses and her boyfriend that died in the war, three days I spent patching up that deal.”  
“She never signed them Oliver, when we went to see her about it, she said she’d changed her mind.”  
Oliver huffed annoyed as he pulled his hand through his sandy tips. “Get me the papers and call me a taxi, I’ll take them myself.”  
“You can’t”  
“I can’t?”  
“She died.”  
Oliver shook out a sigh. “So get me her executors.”  
“We did, it’s a firm in town.”  
“Great, write it on a post it note and call me a cab.”  
“I tried talking to them, they say the Estate has been settled.”  
“With who? She never once mentioned kids.”  
“A great niece apparently.”  
“Do we have a name?”  
“We do, she’s uh…”  
“Spit it out.”  
“Felicity Smoak.”

Oliver choked on the gasp he let out.  
“You’re kidding right?”  
“Wish I was,” Tommy peeped as he rocked back and forth on the heels of his shoes.  
“The woman who sued me.”  
“Technically the woman who sued you and won.”

“She won because our lawyer sucked,” Oliver dulled.  
“Or because you know, she had a really good case,” Tommy replied mockingly.  
“Whose side are you on? I didn’t know the company we had acquired had ripped off some of her little gadget-y things.”

Oliver paced his spacious office as he flicked his pocket flaps with his thumbs. “It’s fine, we can salvage this, property is my bread and butter and what could she want with a run down decrepit old house in the middle of a ghost town now we own everything else? Have someone from acquisitions contact her make sure they use _only_ the development name, keep my name out of it. Offer her a figure high enough she won’t look into it let’s put this thing to bed.”

“Again, would if we could,” Tommy lamented, although the smile at the corner of his lips suggested to Oliver that he was getting far more pleasure out of this than he ought.  
“But?” Oliver groaned.  
“Someone from the lawyer’s office called me under the table. They said she showed up a few days ago, decided to look over the place. She’s been staying there ever since.”  
“Doing what?” Oliver spat. It was virtually a ghost town out there.  
Tommy shrugged. “Starting a cult? Planning your untimely demise?”

Oliver rolled his eyes before he stuffed his hands into his pockets. “What are the odds that she won’t remember me?”  
“Slim to none,” Tommy replied immediately.  
“What are the odds we can buy this property without her making the connection?”  
“Even slimmer.”  
“What are the odds that if I showed up, she’d willingly sell the property?”  
“Absolutely zilch.”

Oliver sighed loudly. “That’s what I thought.”  
“So what do we do?”  
“I have no fucking clue,” Oliver groaned.

**•|•**

Tommy pulled his car alongside the kerb and looked across at Oliver who was checking his tie in the visor mirror.  
“So you're just going to go talk to her?” Tommy asked, wincing at the prospect.  
“We're both business people, this is a business proposition,” Oliver replied as he shifted his shoulders in his well-tailored suit.  
“Unlike the proposition at Court where you didn’t know who she was and you started hitting on her,” Tommy laughed as he reclined the seat and made himself comfortable.  
Oliver shot him a frustrated glare. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Yes it was,” Tommy mocked. “You were all ‘hi, I’m Oliver...’,” he started in a deep voice to mimic Oliver’s. “Once I’m done with this place, can I buy you a drink, or order you one from room service?”  
Oliver cringed as he snapped the visor closed.  
“Hey, I guess you kind of bought her 5 million worth of drinks,” he snickered to himself.  
“I don’t know why I bring you along,” Oliver grunted as he opened the car door.  
Tommy leaned across the seat just as Oliver stepped out. “I’m the comic relief.”  
“Stay in the car,” Oliver huffed before he slammed the door.

**•|•**

Over the course of 5 days Felicity had done a fair amount of work. At first, it had started while she waited for Curtis to FedEx over some things she needed, but she soon realised that pulling out weeds was oddly cathartic – especially when she pictured them being her ex’s head or various limbs.

By the time the fifth day had ticked over she’d cleared the centre of the glasshouse and most of the right hand side. There wasn’t much left to salvage in the way of plants, but from her search of the internet, it appeared the soil was pretty good and she had already made an appointment for someone to look at the fountain in the next day or two.

The overgrown glasshouse was actually looking quite cute if she did say so herself.

**•|•**

Oliver knocked for a third time on the worn door as he rolled his lips and straightened his tie a second time, but still no answer came. He looked through one of the dirty windows in the front and saw a pile of boxes and what looked like computer equipment spread out across the dated carpet, but no sign of Felicity. He wandered down the stairs again and watched as Tommy straightened his seat, preparing to start the car. But, Oliver side tracked the same and ducked down a little garden path that ran alongside the house.

He peered briefly in every first floor window he passed, but the house itself seemed empty. The path led him through a little white gate off its hinges and into what appeared to be an overgrown back garden. The backdoor to the house was opened but after a precursory look from the doorstep, he didn’t see any signs of life there either.

And then he heard it, faint music coming from further down the garden. The yard sloped down but in the distance he could see the tip of what looked like a weather vane.

Doing his best to follow the cobbled path, Oliver made his way across the back garden until the sight became clear and down the bottom of the sloping yard was a greenhouse. He remembered the same on the plans he’d looked at a while ago, but it looked far more impressive in real life than it had on an aerial photograph.

That was where the music was emanating from, and when Oliver stepped a little farther down the hill, he could see a petite blond ruthlessly tearing plants out from around the edges of the same.

She was bent over in a pair of tight jean shorts that left very little to the imagination. He tried to look away, really he did, but she seemed so engrossed in both her task and the music accompanying her, that she was outwardly swaying her hips along with it.

He coughed as he approached, but she didn’t hear. He said her name, just the once, but she still didn’t notice him standing there.

Finally, unsure of what else to do, he switched off the radio on the wrought iron table he was standing beside and waited.

Felicity spun around and startled at his presence before she pointed a rusted garden trowel at him.  
“Who the hell are you?” she asked, but before Oliver could say anything she ‘made’ him. “Wait, I know you, you’re Oliver Queen, the asshole that thought he could sell off something I owned.”  
Oliver coughed as his shoulders jostled. “Technically I didn’t know you owned it.”

She dropped the trowel and set her gloves on the table, beside the radio.  
“To what do I owe the pleasure of _you_, being _here_?” Felicity asked with an unmistakable snark in her voice.  
“I’m uh, sorry for your loss,” he spoke cordially while she crossed her arms over her chest and stared blankly at him.  
“No you’re not. What do you want?” she answered him back dryly.  
“Your Aunt was a fascinating lady,” Oliver recounted, but Felicity’s body language didn’t soften.  
“Great Aunt, and I wouldn’t know. I barely knew her.”  
He smiled, simply because he had nothing else to do.  
“Why are you here?” she asked an alliteration of the question third time.

It was pretty clear Felicity wasn’t going to be wooed with pleasantries, so he might as well just get onto it. “To take this old house off your hands so you can get back to your life,” he remarked as he looked around the shabby piles of dead plants.  
“And why do you want this house?”  
“This is my swimming pool,” he joked as he gestured to the ground. “Well, not mine, but Starlingbank Estate’s pool, the development I’m creating, so I want to purchase this derelict building.”  
A smile lifted open Felicity’s lips. “Of course you do.”  
“I’m prepared to offer you a great deal more than its value, $500,000 right here.”  
“Nope,” she said with a pop of her rosy lips.  
“520.”  
She paused before she smiled, “No.”  
“My investors will probably have me over the coals for this, but $580,000 and that’s as high as I can go.”  
“Still have to be a no,” she replied, still smiling.  
“There is no way you could get that from anyone else,” Oliver argued.  
“Oh but if you want it and I have it, then it’s priceless,” she swooned.  
  
“Your great aunt was willing to sell it,” Oliver bickered while Felicity carefully slipped her gloves back on.  
“But she didn’t, did she? Or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”  
“It was an oversight.”  
Felicity stepped back and smiled. “Well, isn’t that an interesting predicament you’re in,” she commented with a languid shrug.  
His lips rolled together. “You're not selling this house to me are you?”  
“Clever boy,” she whispered before she leaned over and switched on the radio once again. “You can leave now.”

**•|•**

Oliver huffed as he pulled open the driver’s side door.  
“How'd that go?” Tommy asked, despite a clear indication the answer was ‘not well’.  
“Get legal on the phone, I want to know everything about that property, where the boundary is, if the toilet meets code, everything. And move over because I’m driving.”  
“That well huh?” Tommy sighed as he slipped out of the driver’s seat. “Did you try apologising?” he remarked as he trundled around to the passenger side of the car. But Oliver never responded and the car took off the moment Tommy closed his door.

**•|•**

The next time Felicity saw Oliver it was Saturday morning, and she opened the door to him with a slice of toast in her hand and her PJs still on.  
“You make weekend calls now?” she quipped as she leaned her svelte body against the chipped door.  
“Only to people I especially like,” Oliver replied sarcastically.  
“You must be lost then.”  
“I’m going to miss this,” he sighed mockingly.  
“Miss what, my utter disdain for you?”  
“Our banter. So tell me Ms Smoak, how is my 5 million treating you?”  
“I wouldn’t know,” she answered with a shrug, “I didn’t keep it.”

Oliver was surprised, but he kept it hidden behind an unchanging smile.  
“After I paid the lawyer I gave the rest to a bunch of charities. I split it between about 5 so they thank you I’m sure. Except the Society for the Preservation of Worms, that was kind of a joke, but hey, they named a new worm species after you and you featured quite prominently in their bi-annual newsletter, so good for you. It was never about the money,” Felicity admitted before she started to close the door.  
“What was it about then?” Oliver lamented.  
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand. Is there something else you wanted Mr Queen?”

He buttoned his jacket and offered Felicity an agreement she didn’t take. “This is an agreement for sale and purchase, straight 1 million. I’ve already signed it.”  
“Not interested, and not just because I think you’re an asshole, so don’t feel too bad,” Felicity replied with a smirk. “My aunt loved this house and maybe there is something in that.”  
Oliver’s smile grew. “I was kind of hoping you’d turn me down,” he remarked as he backed away from the door. “Good day Ms Smoak, enjoy your toast,” he called while he trekked down the stairs.

“Weirdo,” Felicity mumbled before she kicked the door closed.

**•|•**

  
It was Monday morning, just after breakfast and her much needed coffee, that Felicity set off down to the back of the garden. As she approached, a jutted and pegged out line of red rope caught her eye, and then someone else did.

She ran down the embankment and stopped short of Oliver who was busy lifting a plate of glass out of one of the windows on the right hand side of the glasshouse.  
“What do you think you’re doing?” she snapped.  
Oliver, dressed in dark chinos and a short sleeve tee turned around and smiled before he set the glass panel down to one side.  
“This is my land,” Felicity announced as Oliver slowly plucked off his own set of gardening gloves.  
“Nope,” he remarked before he pointed over the red line. “_That_ is your land and _this_ is mine.”  
The red rope cut off nearly a third of the entire greenhouse and Felicity was on the wrong side of it.

“So technically Ms Smoak, you’re currently trespassing,” Oliver sniggered.  
“Bullshit,” she snipped.  
“Oh but it’s not. See, I looked into it and this glasshouse is built encroaching the neighbour’s land. Land _I_ now own.”

Her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed before she found her phone in her pocket and dialled Curtis’ number.  
“Hey boss,” he answered.  
“I need you to look something up.”  
“Sure boss.”  
“I need you to find the property lines for uh,” she squinted as she tried to remember the address.  
“4155 Jubilee Road,” Oliver leaned in and said close to the phone.  
Felicity huffed before she put the call on speaker. “Can you find me that information?”  
“Uh maybe, but who was the guy with the deep voice?” Curtis asked as he tapped away on his keyboard.  
“Oliver Queen,” Felicity replied wryly.  
They both listened as Curtis choked on the response. “_The_ Oliver Queen, the one you sued?”  
Felicity smiled at Oliver as he grimaced at her.  
“And won,” she answered smugly.  
“The same one you said you would have fucked if he wasn’t such a head in ass?”  
Felicity screamed as she tried to get the phone off speaker, but she wasn’t quick enough and Oliver laughed robustly.  
“I never said that,” she gritted into the microphone with the phone against her ear, while her eyes stayed narrowed at Oliver.  
“I’m pretty sure you said that exact thing?” Curtis prattled – safely off speaker.  
“Do you have the information or not?”  
“This property is old, I can’t find the original survey plans online, you might need to find it the old fashioned way, as in the City archives.”  
She threw her head back in a groan before she thanked Curtis and hung up.

“No help was he?” Oliver asked, chewing on his smile.  
“The plans aren’t online, but you knew that didn’t you?”  
Oliver smiled self-contentedly.  
“And I suppose you know where these archives are?”  
Another smile.  
“Are you going to tell me?” she asked, impatiently rolling her tongue across her teeth.  
He leaned in and lifted a single brow. “Are you going to ask nicely?”  
“Did you ask nicely when you were trying to bankrupt me?” she answered with a venomously-sweet smile.  
“How about we call it even?”  
“How about you tell me where the city archives are?”  
“Better yet, I’ll take you there myself.”

Felicity hated the idea of getting in the car with Oliver Queen, but she wasn’t left with much choice; she needed this sorted out as soon as possible.

**•|•**

  
The city archives might have once been a dungeon for all Felicity knew as they followed their guide down into a dingy cellar that smelled of musk and stale air. The lights were stark and a few flickered as they waited in silence for her to retrieve the right maps.

When the large book landed with a thud on the table in front of Felicity and Oliver, a cloud of dust puffed up, causing them both to cough.

“Should be in this one,” the archiver remarked with a dreary voice. “Just leave in on the table when you’re done.” She walked slowly off the way she came and soon they were alone in the echoing room.

Despite the size of the volume in front of them, they found the map with reasonable ease and Felicity set about reading the script down the side of the records. Dates of sales and purchases were carefully noted along the side all the way back to 1920, consent for the house itself was there and approval to add a front porch.

As Felicity’s finger weaved down the page, Oliver watched her lips mutter out the words she read; it was an oddly endearing trait and, even without a scratch of makeup on, she had beautifully rosy lips that he couldn’t help but watch.

Her finger stopped dead and the reading stopped.  
“You’re kidding,” she sighed, and in the deathly silence of the room it sounded much louder than it was.

Oliver stood up and looked over her shoulder to where her finger had stopped. It was the lodged application to build the greenhouse – not unexpected. And then he saw what she must have seen and his mouth gaped just as wide.

The name on the application was _Harold Oliver Queen and Hattie Catherine Kuttler._

**•|•**

“So it turns out I had a Great Uncle Harold,” Oliver scoffed as he hung up his phone twenty minutes later. “He died in the second world war.”  
“Your Great Uncle and my Great Aunt…” Felicity paused, unwilling to finish the sentence.  
“Were apparently having sex,” Oliver remarked as he paced a tiny circle.  
“I was going to say in love,” she retorted, as she too paced her own small circle. “So where does this leave us?”  
“Are you going to sell me the property?”  
“No,” Felicity scoffed. “Are you going to leave the greenhouse as it is?”  
“No,” Oliver derided.

“So then,” she huffed as she stopped pacing and looked at Oliver.  
He stopped pacing and looked at her. “So then.”  
“I’ll guess I’ll see you in Court again Mr Queen.”

Felicity turned and headed for the stairwell, but she stopped just before she reached it. “This time, try not to hit on me outside the Court room will you?”  
“Not going to be a problem Ms Smoak,” he jeered with a smirk.

_Not going to be a problem at all_

**-end**

**AN/ I did it again... **

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